A Different Kind of Freedom

Joni Eareckson Tada: I just love the theme of this conference: "Freedom, Fullness, and Fruitfulness in Christ." That's something I've been relishing in, humbled by, and blessed with, especially celebrating thirty-five years of ministry at Joni and Friends, delivering hundreds of thousands of wheelchairs.

But that part about freedom . . . that is a different story. Freedom for me has never been-and it continues not to be-an easy thing to pursue. Freedom from anxiety, freedom from worry, freedom from fears of the future, freedom from discontented feelings, freedom from a sour, peevish spirit early in the morning when my chronic pain hits my left hip. It's always been that way. It's been so hard to find freedom in my soul.

I remember forty-seven years ago, after I broke my neck in that diving accident, I used to lie in the hospital bed staving off depression. Now, I didn't know as many Scriptures back then as I did hymns. And so I would often sing to quiet my anxious soul: "Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others Thou art calling, do not pass me by."

I would so often go to that hymn, because it so much reminded me of a favorite portion of Scripture. In fact, it was the kind of Scripture that I often asked friends to read to me-when they would come to the hospital during visiting hours-from John 5. Let me read it for you now, and I think you'll understand why I thought about it so much:

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which . . . is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie-the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" . . . Then Jesus said to him, "Get up . . . and walk" (John 5:2-6, 8 NIV).

I cannot tell you how many nights I would imagine myself by the pool of Bethesda dressed in a rough burlap cloak, maybe lying next to that man on the straw mat, paralyzed for thirty-eight years, hoping-desperately hoping-that Jesus would not pass me by, but that He'd hear my cry to be set free! Free from this paralyzed body, free from the anxiety, the depression, the worry, the fear, and even the suicidal despair.

But by the time I graduated out of that hospital a couple of years later, my fingers and my feet had never gotten the message. I still could not walk.

My sister Jay Kay invited me to come to the family farm in Maryland to live with her there, and so I did. One afternoon we were watching Christian TV, and we heard an advertisement that there was going to be a faith-healing service in Washington, D.C. at the Hilton Hotel. Kathryn Kuhlman was coming to town.

I don't know how many of you remember Kathryn Kuhlman. She was kind of the Benny Hinn of her day. My sister and I wasted no time. We registered, we signed up, and I was there the following Friday night. The ushers escorted us into that grand ballroom in the Hilton. Over to the wheelchair section they took us.

I sat there with, oh maybe, sixty, seventy, a hundred other people with very, very significant disabilities. We anxiously awaited the beginning of the service. The organ crescendoed, hymns were sung, Scriptures were read, testimonies were given, and then all of a sudden a spotlight came on and Kathryn Kuhlman herself came waltzing onto the stage in a long white gown.

Oh my goodness, my heart was pumping. There were more testimonies, more Scriptures, and suddenly the spotlight went over to the far corner of the ballroom. It seemed as though healings were happening over there. And then the spotlight shifted slightly, and over in that corner there were more healings happening.

And I wanted to say, "Well, come over here where all the hard cases are!" [laughter] But the spotlight never made it in my direction. Maybe about an hour-and-a-half later the ushers came to escort all of us with disabilities out early. I guess they didn't want us to create a traffic jam at the elevator.

So there I was, number fifteen in a line of sixty people using wheelchairs, white canes, walkers at the elevator. I could hear the music on the other side of the wall. The service was continuing on, winding down. And I looked up and down this long line of broken people, and I thought to myself, Something's wrong with this picture. Something's wrong.

That night, when I got back to the family farm, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking,What kind of healer, what kind of savior, what kind of rescuer, what kind of deliverer would refuse the prayers of a paralytic? Okay, I thought, if God's not going to heal me, I am just not going to do this. I am not going to live this way.

And soon a bitter root, a real spirit of complaining, began to take hold of my life. Nothing anybody did was good enough. Everything everybody did was wrong, and every hurdle I faced became a reason to feel sorry for myself. Most of all, Jesus, the One I wanted to feel close to, He seemed so far, so removed, so distant.

If I couldn't be healed, then I told my sister Jay the next morning, "I don't want to get out of bed. Just turn on the air conditioner, close the drapes, turn off the lights, shut the door and leave me alone!" But even in that darkness-weeks I spent in that bed in the dark-I couldn't live with that kind of despair! I couldn't! There had to be something more.

So even then, in that dark bedroom, I would sing to comfort myself. One hymn most often I sang was a plea for help: "Oh, Jesus . . . Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, (oh Jesus, I'm so helpless!) O abide with me."

And with that hymn I prayed, "God, if I'm not gonna die, then You please show me how to live. I cannot do quadriplegic. You show me how to live." It was my first prayer. I mean it was sincere and honest and from the heart. It wasn't long or wordy. It was short and sweet and so sincere.

Those were the days, then, when my sister would come into the bedroom . . . I would ask her to turn on the light, draw the drapes, and get me out of bed (which she happily did). And most often, during those days she would push me into the living room where I sat in front of a music stand much like this one.

She would push me in front of it, lock my wheelchair, plop my Bible on the music stand, put a mouth stick in my teeth, and then I would flip this way and that with my mouth stick, trying to make sense of it all. Of course, I was still interested in healing. I still wanted to know what the Bible had to say about it, and I found out.

In the first chapter of the gospel of Mark, there Jesus is performing all kinds of miracles long, long into the day and even past sunset. And the next morning the crowds returned-more sick, disabled people. Simon and his companions, they quickly go looking for Jesus, but He's nowhere to be found. Jesus had gotten up early that morning and gone to the top of the hill to a solitary place to pray.

Finally, Simon and his companions find Jesus, and they tell Him about all these sick and disabled and diseased people at the bottom of the hill, all looking to be healed. And what does Jesus say to them? In verse 38, He says, "Let us go somewhere else-to the nearby villages-so I can preach there also. That is why I have come."

I couldn't believe that! I had to read it again. All those sick and disabled people, looking to be healed, and Jesus says, "Let's go someplace else." Uhh! How could He turn them away? How could He turn away people like me? And that's when it hit me. It hit me that it's not that Jesus did not care about all those people; it's just that their problems-especially their physical problems-weren't His main focus. The gospel was His focus.

The gospel that says, "Sin kills, hell is real, but God is merciful. His kingdom can change you, and I am your passport." And whenever people missed this, whenever they started coming to Jesus just to get their problems fixed, the Savior would always back away.

No wonder I'd been so depressed! I had mainly been into Jesus to get my problems and pain and paralysis fixed. Yes, Jesus cares about suffering, and He spent most of His time on earth trying to relieve it. But the gospel of Mark showed me His priorities, because the same man that healed blind eyes and withered hands also said, "Gouge out that eye, cut off that hand if it leads you into sin, if it leads you astray."

Oh my goodness, that's when I really got the picture. To me, healing had always been the big deal; freedom from this physical problem had always been the big deal. But to God, my soul was a much bigger deal. That's when I started searching for a different kind of freedom, a deeper kind of healing.

Psalm 139:23: "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and . . ." [sings] see if there be some wicked way in me. Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. I so want to be free!

And for the last forty-seven years in this wheelchair, that has been my prayer. And God has been answering, exposing sin and selfishness in my heart, reminding me of the many times I will fudge the truth or hog the spotlight or allow stiff-necked, stubborn pride to push me away from Him, putting worthless idols before my eyes. God has been answering that prayer, and He has been exposing in my heart the things from which I really do need to be free. And I am so far from being finished. I have such a long, long way to go. God is still searching. God is still testing.

Remember that bitter root, that spirit of complaining I just told you about . . . how nothing anybody ever did was good enough? Well, it was around 1985, just a short time after I married my husband, Ken, and he was really starting to struggle with the non-stop, 24/7, day-to-day routines of my quadriplegia.

Now, to be sure, my friend Judy Butler and many other girlfriends were helping out, but still, the bulk of the pressure fell on my husband's shoulders. One day, he had been ignoring me all afternoon, giving me the cold shoulder . . . wouldn't even talk to me.

That night I begged him, "What's wrong, Ken? Tell me, what's wrong?" Still, he wouldn't say anything. But right before we went to bed, he sat on the edge of our mattress and-slump-shouldered-confessed, "I feel so trapped! I don't know how to explain this, but I can't do this. I can't do it. I am so trapped!"

To which I replied, spitting out, out of nowhere, "Well, why didn't you think about this when we got married? Didn't you know it was going to be this hard? Where was your head?" As soon as I said those things I felt like, Ah, I wish I could stuff them back into my mouth! And I turned to Ken and said, "Oh, sweetheart, I am so sorry. I did not mean to say that. That's not like me. That's not like me at all!"

But you know what, it is like me. It is just like me, just like me. And so, I am not the paragon of virtue that I would often like to think I am. No, no, not at all. And God, to remind me of that, does not remove hardships. No, He pushes them my way. He brings them, He allows them, He permits them, He purposes them, ordains them, whatever word you want to use . . . they come!

And pain and problems and paralysis become the lemon that He squeezes to reveal the spitefulness and the selfishness. We are, at the core, each one of us, dog-nasty sinners and we don't like it, we don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it, but that's the truth about me and I need to know it.

Search me, oh God, and test me and try me, and show me the sin of which I am so easily capable. So in those tired, middle years of our marriage, I learned to sing a different song about healing: "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."

God began to uproot that bitter spirit, especially that spirit of complaining, and replace it with perseverance and endurance and confidence in Him, in Jesus. And most of all, He gave me an empathetic understanding of other people who suffer, especially my husband.

Anytime I dare think that I have arrived, God squeezes that lemon more, revealing the not-so-pretty stuff of which I am made. In the last ten years or so of our marriage, God has squeezed it especially hard. About a decade ago, oh in the late 1990s, early 2000s, I was in the worst of pain-mind-bending, jaw-splitting pain. Ken had to get up extra times to turn me at night. I just could not be comfortable in one position. There were nights where he had to get up three, four, five, six times. One night before he turned out the lights, he sat on the edge of our bed, slump-shouldered, and confessed, "I don't know how to tell you, Joni, but I can't do this anymore. I am so-I hate to say it-I feel trapped."

This time, my response: "Oh, sweetheart, I don't blame you. I don't fault you one bit. If I were you, I'd feel exactly the same way. So I'm not going to scold you. I'm going to cheer you on and pray for you, and we're going to get through this with the help of Jesus. We'll get through this, I know we will!"

And suddenly, I could see a weight lift off my husband's shoulders. It was a huge turning point in our marriage, and God was doing a healing-a deeper healing-not only in me, but in my husband.

Ken and I have discovered a love that holds on through it all, sometimes by a single thread. We've learned that the strongest relationships do not come easy-they are earned. They are tested by pain and sometimes pushed to the breaking point.

Like when I got breast cancer, stage 3 breast cancer, four years ago. After my mastectomy, my husband Ken and my friend Judy Butler, we were sitting in the office of my medical oncologist. And with his clipboard, he was listing through all the things that I was about to face in chemotherapy.

"Well, Mrs. Tada, your immune system will be weakened, and you will receive highly toxic, poisonous drugs which will weaken your system further. Your bones will become thin and frail. You'll get bladder infections and, no doubt, lung infections. Your hair will fall out . . ." He had to get up to take a phone call. He walked outside, closed the door, and I said, "I can't do this! I can't do this! I can't do this!"

I could feel my friend Judy rise to come over to hold me and embrace me, to comfort me, but in that same instant I could also feel Ken get up out of his chair, gently push Judy aside and whisper, "I'll take over from here." Ohhh. My eyes were still closed, I was still crying, but I could not believe what I was hearing. Is this the same man who just, what-five, six, seven years earlier-was very happy to let Judy Butler do anything?

No, this was not the same man. This was Ken Tada, free! This was a free man; this was Ken Tada transformed from glory to glory to glory. It was an incredibly deep healing. The lessons we learned in more than two decades of quadriplegia and pain had prepared us for the fierce battle against cancer. With every squeeze of that lemon, with every lesson learned, through all the testing and the trying, we were able to let go of the anxiety, the sin, the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the worries, the fears of the future.

And the harder we were squeezed, the harder we leaned on Jesus. We began to realize that God had delivered us from the only kind of suffering that could ever harm us-and that is, separation from Him-thanks to Jesus! That means from now on, every trial, every test, every ounce of suffering that touches our lives is designed by God to make our souls great-to enlarge our soul's capacity for Jesus.

Every step of the way, through my quadriplegia, through cancer and chronic pain, every step of the way has been a tough rigorous reliance on Jesus Christ, and every step it's . . . [sings] "All the way my Savior leads me, cheers each winding path I tread, Gives me grace for every trial, Feeds me on the Living Bread. Though my weary steps may falter, And my soul athirst may be, Gushing from the Rock before me, Lo! a spring of joy I see, Gushing from the Rock before me, Lo! a spring of joy I see."

Ladies, make no mistake about it. Suffering is the textbook that will teach you who you really are. Suffering is the textbook that will show you the stuff of which you are really made. And it will sandblast you; it will strip you bare; it will strip you of all your sinful ways, leaving your soul raw and exposed.

But also that you might be better bonded to the Savior. When our hearts are beating in rhythm with His, you can't help but feel His pleasure, His favor, and His approval. Heavens, joy comes cascading down, spilling up and splashing out of your heart, streaming out to others in rivers of encouragement and rising back up to God in ecstatic fountains of praise.

"Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation! Oh, my soul, praise Him for He is thy health and salvation." Then you are, as it says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything." Jesus is everything! Jesus is ecstasy beyond compare, and it is worth anything-any amount of suffering-any squeezing of the lemon, to be His intimate friend.

For instance, when I was going through chemotherapy, feeling very weak and nauseous, I was being driven home by Ken one day, from the hospital. We were going down the 101 freeway, and my wheelchair was tied down in the back of the van. We were talking to each other through the rearview mirror, and we started discussing how suffering is like little splash-overs of hell. Really, tiny little splash-overs of hell that give you an appreciation of the ultimate hell from which Christ has rescued you.

So then we started wondering, well then, what are splash-overs of heaven? Are they those easy, breezy bright times?

Are splash-overs of heaven those easy, breezy bright days when all the bills are paid and there are no trials on the horizon, and you're feeling good about the world? And we decided, "no," as we pulled up into the driveway. Ken turned off the ignition, and we were quiet for a moment, and finally I said, "You know what a splash-over of heaven is, Ken? It's finding Jesus in your splash-over of hell. Nothing could be more heavenly than finding Jesus in the middle of your hell."

People often ask me, "Joni, don't you think cancer on top of chronic pain on top of quadriplegia . . . don't you think God is asking a little too much of you?" Well, is He? Would He would be asking too much of you if that were God's choice of lemon in your life?

Well, to this you were called, 1 Peter 2:21 says. "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." Oh, girls! I want to follow in Jesus' steps! Because if He learned obedience through the things which He suffered, I am not above my Master.

My good friend Bobbie Wolgemuth, who I believe is watching right now through the live stream-she has days, weeks to live. More than two-and-a-half years ago she was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. And right now my good friend Bobbie is in hospice . . . my sweet, precious Bobbie. The lady who I always sing hymns with. We wrote those hymnbook CDs, Hymns for a Kid's Heart , and so much more.

She wrote an email that I think embodies exactly what I'm trying to say:

Dear Joni,

Just as chemotherapy medicine is designed to kill the bad cancer cells, so God designs a toxic painful trial to destroy and starve and kill anything in my soul that is selfish or offensive to Him. I willingly surrender to His infusion, knowing that He has chosen what will ultimately bring me more abundant life than I could possibly imagine.

So I open my hands and my heart, and I offer my veins to be infused with His choice of trials so that I might receive His beauty and perfect healing.

A deeper healing.

God is still testing and trying and seeing if there be any offensive way in Bobbie and her husband, Robert, and certainly in my life and in my husband Ken's life. It's why you will often hear me quoting from the prayer book on which I was raised. As a Reformed Episcopalian, I was raised on The Book of Common Prayer, and I learned very early on, at a young age, the General Confession. I love that confession:

Oh, mighty and merciful God, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and the desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us, miserable sinners. But have mercy upon us, O Jesus!

I love those words, but I hate those words! I hate them! So don't be thinking that when I get to heaven what I am most looking forward to is a new body, free of cancer or pain or quadriplegia. Don't be thinking that when I get to be with Jesus I'm going to relish mostly in jumping up and dancing and kicking and doing aerobics. No, no, no. No.

What I am looking forward to mostly is the new heart. I want a glorified heart that is free of sin, free of selfishness, free of self-centeredness, free of fear of the future, free of, just the fear of everything. Free, free, free.

A heart that no longer feels trapped by circumstances or resists God or looks for an escape or tries to justify itself when it is wronged. Oh my goodness, girls! When I get to heaven, that will be . . . that will be . . . [sings] "That will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me; When by His grace I shall look on His face-That will be glory, be glory for me." [applause]

And l Peter 4 is the key to freedom. Here it is; it's comin' up: "Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude [about your suffering], because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin" (v. 1). And as a result, he lives "rather for the will of God" (v. 2). And what is the will of God?

Oh, it is many things, but how about starting with Philippians 2:14: "Do everything without complaining." Everything. Some time ago, my husband, Ken, and I had the joy of visiting the Holy Land. It was a wonderful trip, and on the day we visited the city of Old Jerusalem, Ken did not alert me about the itinerary for the day, but he wheeled me in early in the morning through the Jaffa Gate, and we bumpety-bump-bumped down the steps of the Via Dolorosa.

In a wheelchair, you don't go up the steps; you go down the steps. And we bumpety-bumped down the cobblestone streets of the Arab bazaar, and we passed the Temple Mount on the right, made a left-hand turn down a path, past St. Anne's Church, and then the path opened up and, oh my goodness-I can't believe it! "Ken, would you look at this! It's the pool of Bethesda! Oh, Ken!"

"You wouldn't believe how many times when I was in the hospital, so many years-so many years ago-oh, Ken I used to imagine myself right here, right here! I would picture myself by that paralyzed guy on a straw mat, begging, looking for Jesus not to pass me by; so longing for a physical healing!"

At that point, Ken had vaulted over the guardrail to the ruin, and he ran down to the cistern to see if there was still any water left in the pool of Bethesda. [laughter] But I am just leaning on my elbow against the guardrail, tears streaming down my face.

Thank you, Jesus! I so wanted You to change my situation. I so wanted you to fix my problems. I so wanted You to heal me of my paralysis. I so wanted You to remove all the suffering, but You were so wise. You were so wise in the way You have squeezed those lemons, because a "no" answer from You to my request for healing and freedom from this body has meant "yes, yes!" to so many wonderful things in my life. Because a "no" answer has purged so much sin from my life-it was exposed in my heart-so many things I didn't even know were hidden in those deep recesses.

But when You squeezed me-oh my goodness!-out pours the complaining and the selfishness and the bitterness and the whining and the peevishness and the sour disposition and the arguing, and the "wha, wha, wha."

Jesus, You have done it! I am so grateful! Your "no" answer to my request for You to remove me from my terrible circumstances has meant a deeper empathy for other people who suffer. It has forced me to depend on Your grace. It has increased my compassion for others who hurt. It has put complaining behind me. It has stretched my hope for heaven. It has pushed me deeper into Your Word. It has given me a lively, buoyant life of prayer. Most of all it has drawn me so, so much closer to You, oh You, my precious Man of Sorrows, acquainted with my grief. You are my Lord of joy. You are my Lord of joy! You fully have my heart.

Maybe tonight you see yourself at the pool of Bethesda, or maybe you see yourself number fifteen in a long line of people, waiting for God to change your situation, to fix your problems, to heal you of some circumstance, or transform your situation, and maybe you are wondering why God has not fixed things, why He has not changed things, why He has not removed the disappointment, given healing when you have asked for it.

Well, ladies, God may-He may-grant you release from suffering. And if He does, that is wonderful cause for praise. But if not, let me assure you that God will use that suffering. He will use it to remove anything and everything that stands in the way of His fellowship with you.

Jesus is heaven-bent on getting as close and intimate and personal with you as He possibly can. And He's going to squeeze that lemon so that your soul, sin-free, can be better bonded to His heart. And you will enjoy ecstasy beyond compare . . . ecstasy that will see you through any and every disappointment. That's what freedom feels like. That's what it feels like, and that is also the deeper healing.

The really good news is, you don't have to break your neck to believe it.

I want to close in prayer, but I want you to close in prayer with me. As you can see, I've been singing hymns-and I don't pretend to be a professional singer. (I sing off-key half the time.) But they're sincere and from the heart. So I want you to pray and sing with me a closing petition to your Savior. And you perhaps know this hymn well, so sing it with me from your heart:

[singing]

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.

Mold me and make me after Thy will,

while I am waiting, yielded and still.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Wounded and weary, help me I pray!

Power, all power, surely is Thine!

Touch me and heal me, Savior Divine.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Hold o'er my being absolute sway!

Fill with Thy Spirit 'till all shall see

Christ only, always, living in me.

Fill with Thy Spirit 'till all shall see

Christ only, always, living in me.

Amen.

Thank you, ladies, for letting me share my message . . . of freedom. [applause]